Panasonic Develops VCSEL Laser with Surface Plasmon Mirrors

May 25, 2006

Panasonic today announced the development of a novel VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser) utilizing an epoch-making physical phenomenon called as surface plasmon resonance. This is the world first demonstration of high output power in the VCSEL taking advantage of the surface plasmon resonance. The laser is applicable to practical high speed and short distance optical communication such as optical interconnection and plastic fiber communication.

The VCSEL features a novel "Surface Plasmon Mirror" in which a periodic silver nano-holes array is formed. The laser successfully achieves both high output power and low threshold current by effectively controlling the reflectance and the transmittance at the mirror. The VCSEL can reduce the power consumption in optical communication systems.

The surface Plasmon resonance drastically enhances optical transmission through the silver nano-holes array at an optimized pitch of the holes resulting in high optical output of 2mW. The used silver is known as the metal exhibiting the maximum resonant effect as well as very high reflectance. The enhanced reflectance at the mirror successfully reduces the threshold current down to 0.5mA.

In addition, fabrication process of the silver nano-holes is successfully established using electron beam lithography. In order to avoid any degradation of the silver, the nano-holes are entirely covered by dielectric films such as silicon nitride.

Applications for forty three domestic and eleven international patents have been filed. These research and development results have been presented at Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) 2006, held in Long Beach, California, U.S. from May 21 to 26, 2006.

Related Stories

The term "plasmons" might sound like something from the soon-to-be-released new Star Wars movie, but the effects of plasmons have been known about for centuries. Plasmons are collective oscillations of conduction electrons ...

Nanoscience is the study of materials that measure at the scale of one-billionth of a metre in length. While "tiny" is the very nature of this scientific field, nanoscience is a huge force behind modern day technology and ...

Researchers at the Hanover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT), University of Hanover, Germany, have developed a self-contained fiber optic sensor for smartphones with the potential for use in a wide variety of biomolecular ...

A Kickstarter campaign is heating up over a device called Phree. It's for writing on nearly any surface you want to and seeing your writing instantly appear on your screen. In a promotional video, a presenter says, "In 2015 ...

For centuries, artists mixed silver and gold powder with glass to fabricate colorful windows to decorate buildings. The results were impressive, but they didn't have a scientific reason for how these ingredients together ...

Recommended for you

Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters. But they have never been able to get a sheet of nanoparticles to curve or fold ...

Serendipity has as much a place in science as in love. That's what Northeastern physicists Swastik Kar and Srinivas Sridhar found during their four-year project to modify graphene, a stronger-than-steel infinitesimally thin ...

Graphene has been called a wonder material, capable of performing great and unusual material acrobatics. Boron nitride nanotubes are no slackers in the materials realm either, and can be engineered for physical and biological ...

(Phys.org)—Currently, all light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emit light of only one color, which is predefined during fabrication. So far, tuning the color of light produced by a single LED has never been realized, despite numerous ...

When it comes to installing solar cells, labor cost and the cost of the land to house them constitute the bulk of the expense. The solar cells—made often of silicon or cadmium telluride—rarely cost more than 20 percent ...

A team of researchers from Berkeley Lab and Columbia University has passed a major milestone in molecular electronics with the creation of the world's highest-performance single-molecule diode. Working at Berkeley Lab's Molecular ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.